Chapter Forty-Four
Asher
Sunlight stretches across the room, catching in the steam wafting from the coffee mug at Raine’s elbow.
She frowns at the laptop screen, scrolls, clicks, and frowns again.
I don’t interrupt her. Between the tension in her shoulders and the way her thumb keeps drifting to her index finger, she’s deep in her own head.
Breakfast was quiet. I woke with her hand resting over my heart. She shifted before she opened her eyes, pulling her arms tight to her own body. But the warmth that touch left behind hasn’t faded.
I run a hand through my hair, still damp from my shower, then pick up my tablet. The dryer tumbles quietly in the background, the sound a low undercurrent to the music playing from the living room speaker.
Taking a seat on the couch, I check the email accounts for more than a dozen active aliases.
The first few are empty. Quiet. Nothing out of the ordinary.
Eddie’s inbox has a single new message. Someone asking for “immediate and discrete relocation support.” The kind of work I’ve done dozens of times under different names.
But the wording of the message rubs me the wrong way. Particularly the last line.
Please reply with your current rates and precisely how soon you could be in Jakarta.
“Eddie” doesn’t do relocation support. He’s strictly digital infiltration and extraction. Shit. Between the fraud alert and this…Eddie’s burned, and I need to shut him down. Now.
Ten minutes into the work, Raine inhales sharply enough to worry me. “What is it?” I ask.
“There are more files today.” She sits back in the chair, pressing her fingers together until the tips turn white. “That archive folder I accessed last night? There were twenty-four entries. Now, there are thirty-one. The new ones are all time-stamped within the past six hours.”
“As in more people GSD’s touching? More people connected to you?”
She nods once. “I…maybe?” A heavy breath, slow and controlled, heaves her shoulders. “I have to check Jonas’s file first.”
I set the tablet down and move to the chair next to her. Her voice isn’t entirely steady, and though she’s present in her body, a tiny tremor runs through her fingers as she scrolls through a page of institutional status updates. The last one was made at nine-thirty this morning.
Subject non-compliant with reassignment directive. Active search authorization issued.
“He got your message. He’s in the wind.”
“And they’re hunting him for it.” Her chin dips, and she curls inward until her spine hits the back of the chair. “His mom is still alive. Or was, the last time I talked to him. And he has a sister. GSD will use them as leverage.”
“You said he was competent.” I cover her hand with mine. “He wouldn’t have run without a plan.”
Raine rolls her right shoulder until a wince tightens lines around her eyes. “You’re right. I can’t hold that worry and find the pattern in these new updates. This can’t all be about me. If they tried to eliminate every single person I’ve ever worked with…someone would notice.”
The tremor in her fingers vanishes as she closes Jonas’s record and returns to the top level directory.
After another minute, when I don’t move, she angles her head so her gaze locks onto mine. “I’m okay, Asher. Really.”
I can see the truth in her eyes. I’ve never met anyone who can reorient themselves as quickly as she can. It’s remarkable, and it catches me off guard every single time. She rests her hand on my thigh, squeezes gently, then turns back to the laptop.
That she can touch me at all is a fucking miracle after what she went through. Every time she does, whatever this is between us—attraction, connection, something more I’m not sure I’m ready to name—strengthens. There’s no way I’ll ever be able to walk away from her. Not unless she asks me to.
“If that changes…” I say, returning to the couch to burn everything with even the most tenuous connection to Eddie Stewart.
“I’ll tell you.”
Raine
This shouldn’t happen.
Seven new files since last night. That makes thirty-one people whose records have been updated since I escaped.
Coherent Path’s protocols kept me so disoriented, I couldn’t build a perfect map of the facility in my head. Just enough to get us out of there when Asher found me. But…it didn’t feel that big.
“Asher?” I don’t turn, my focus locked on the screen. “The black site. Did you get a sense of the size?”
“Above ground, they’d dressed it up as a forest service outpost. Bland concrete, federal green signs…
Nothing unusual except for the razor wire over the chain-link fencing.
The offices on the main level were empty.
One elevator inside, with two armed guards checking IDs, a second, bigger one around back.
That’s how we got out. No cameras over that one.
“You were on sublevel three. The computer terminal was in a central hub with a couple of desks and a single security camera. The rest of the floor was arranged around it. I counted eight cells and three interrogation rooms before I found the one they’d left you in at the very end of the hall.”
I swallow hard, the memory of my life fading away too close to the surface. “So they couldn’t house more than ten detainees.”
“Not unless Coherent Path has access to the other sublevels. But I didn’t see evidence of that. I entered the detainee ID I was looking for on a terminal outside the elevator and it routed me to sublevel three immediately.”
I open my notebook, flip to a blank page, and set a pen next to the laptop. There’s a pattern in these files. There has to be. If GSD sent all thirty-one people to Coherent Path at the same time, someone would notice. So what is it?
Three hours later, the ache in my neck is bad enough to disrupt my ability to think.
Four files have the RJ-3 escalation code.
Another six are marked with RJ-2. And ten show a recent update to RJ-1.
The others have varying statuses from possible proximity to restricted subject to potential for future risk exposure, whatever that means.
I’ve only put a name to four of them. Jonas, Tessa, my Assistant Director, Claire, and her boss, Bertrand Hensley.
If Hensley or Claire disappeared, the entire organization would notice. Tessa has a monitoring check scheduled for 3:30 this afternoon.
The music playing softly in the background doesn’t change, but something in me does. My pulse slips ahead of my breathing, too fast to be useful, and I force them back in sync—inhale, hold, release—until the mismatch evens out.
I let my gaze unfocus. The tip of the pen drags across the margin of the notebook without instruction, hard enough my hand shakes.
Blinking hard, I stare at the string of numbers.
Two-one-seven-four-three-eight.
Where did that come from?
I glance back up at the screen. The last RJ-1 file is still open, all those redacted fields mocking me. I scroll to the right, verifying the timestamp from late last night. That’s when I see it. Those same six digits.
I check another file. Then another. By the fourth file, I’m not searching anymore. I’m confirming.
The code isn’t tied to the agent at all. It only shows up when there’s an escalation. Never on routine status updates like travel authorizations or security clearance increases or background checks.
This is an approval code. And whoever it belongs to? They’re the one who signs off on sending people through Coherent Path.
My stomach cramps. It’s strange enough that I pause. Breakfast feels far away, though my sense of time is still so skewed, I have to check the laptop’s clock to know for sure.
It’s after noon.
I sit with the sensation for a breath, maybe two, surprised by how foreign it feels to notice something as simple as hunger in my own body.
I log out carefully. Even with all the precautions we’re taking—a secured hot spot, rotating VPN connections every session, minimal cell phone usage—every time we use the internet, we leave a trail. Whether we can see it or not.
Once the laptop is powered down, I stand. My legs complain. So do my ribs. But the twinges and aches are duller now. Normal, given everything they did to me.
“Asher?” I pull the leftover stew out of the fridge. “I’m heating up lunch. Do you want some?”
He glances up from his tablet, surprise flashing in his eyes for a quick moment. “Sure. I’d love a bowl.”
It only takes five minutes before lunch is steaming, and Asher joins me at the table.
It feels so normal to sit here and share a meal with him. After the first spoonful of stew, my stomach growls loudly and my cheeks flush with heat. “I didn’t realize how hungry I was.”
“You’ve been running analysis since nine,” he says. “I wager you’ve learned more in three hours than most people do in a week. That’s bound to work up an appetite.”
“Was that supposed to be…a compliment?” Social cues have never been one of my strengths, but Asher’s smiling, and my lips twitch without permission.
“It was supposed to be accurate.” Dry humor edges his tone. “And a compliment.”
I huff out a breath. “Fair.”
After a few minutes, he reaches for his napkin. “A job request came in through one of my original aliases this morning. Not Mason Hale. Eddie Stewart.”
My spoon wobbles, and a piece of chicken slides off and hits the bowl with a loud plop. “Are you…taking it?”
I hate how thin my voice sounds. Needing someone…wanting someone…I’m not prepared for it. But this is what he does. What he’s always done. I can’t expect him to give it up.
“No,” he says, his voice firm. “The request was off. The phrasing, the timing, the urgency. I can’t prove it was fake, but I have my suspicions. Whoever sent it wasn’t looking for Eddie. They were looking for me.”
All the warmth the stew brought fades in a single breath. “GSD connected Eddie to Mason Locke.”
“Maybe. I’ve made other enemies in my life. It could have come from one of them. But the timing is suspicious. So I burned Eddie. He’s gone. Government records, bank accounts, credit, work history…that’s what I was doing this morning.”
“But…if he was one of your original covers… Asher, you can’t get that back again.”
He shrugs. “No. But keeping him could have led GSD right to us. I won’t take that risk. I’m here now, Raine. Operationally…and more. Wherever this goes—with us—that’s where I want to be.”
Something inside me shifts, and the cold knot in my stomach loosens. He’s choosing this. Choosing me. I wish I was brave enough to tell him what that means to me.